If you have a laptop that is a few years old and it has been through the grind, there is a good chance that it may be experience overheating problems.

You need to understand that because they need to be portable, a laptop’s hardware components will tend to fail quicker than a desktop computer.

Laptop Overheating Symptoms

• Freeze or crash 15 to 30 minutes after starting up.
• Freezes when performing something that is processor intensive such as watching a video or another task that is very taxing on the laptop’s processor.
• The bottom of the laptop may get too hot to rest on your legs while using it.

From my experience, which includes working over 10 years in the computer field, and the research I have gathered from my web readers is that the number one reason that causes a laptop to freeze is directly linked to video.

Here are some of the more common scenarios:

1. Watching/streaming a video/movie online such as Youtube
2. Watching a DVD
3. Playing an installed game or an online game (Facebook game)
4. Adobe Flash crashes while playing a video or game

Here are the exact steps I would take in troubleshooting this type of problem.

For Windows users, the so-called blue screen of death is an ominous screen that verifies something has gone terribly wrong with your PC or laptop. One of the most common tech support call exclamations of frustration is, “my computer keeps bluescreening! What do I do?”

Fortunately, if you are saying, “my computer keeps blue screening and rebooting,” not all may be lost! Here, are a few of the causes and possible fixes you can employ to get your PC back to full health.

While it is true that the blue screen error messages usually mean something is wrong, there are usually a few basic things that can be done to repair the system. Not every system can be fixed, but it is worth trying some of these simple steps before taking your laptop to a technician.

Corrupt Operating System Files

Blue screens usually occur when some part of the operating system cannot read critical file data that are needed. Windows is running the show for all applications that you are using. Sometimes, one of the critical system files that it uses regularly cannot be read. The abnormal termination or power outage caused one of these files to be saved incorrectly. I have seen this happen many times.

Installing the latest window’s updates or services pack can cause a computer to start blue screening.

Corrupt Driver Files

Most external and internal devices, from printers to graphic cards, have driver files that tell Windows how to interact with hardware. Windows Update often makes changes to operating system files. Drivers that were working might suddenly cause serious errors after applying these updates.

Spyware, Malware or Virus Activity

Unusual blue screen errors can be caused by spyware or virus infections. Since these programs try to do sneaky things that they are not supposed to, they sometimes cause Windows to throw up a blue screen error for lack of better information.

These are a few common symptoms that indicate spyware or malware.

Those 3 steps right there will get rid of the majority of infections. In some cases, intense utilities may need to be run to remove infections.

Bad RAM (Memory)

Bad RAM is one of the less common things that could be causing a blue screen, but it does and can happen.

Random access memory is where temporary data is stored for programs and other operations being used by the computer. If one of the RAM chips has a fault, you may experience blue screen errors. These errors may seem to happen at random.

Downloading and running Memtest will help you discover if anything is wrong with your computer’s RAM. If problems are found, you may need to remove or replace the defective RAM or take the computer to a technician for replacement.

Hardware and Overheating

The internal components of your computer can also be responsible for blue screen errors. An overheating machine will usually cause a blue screen. Errors will also occur if certain physical components have become loose or dust has collected within the computer. Cleaning vents and making sure fans function will help resolve these issues.

When All Else Fails

If the above suggestions do not resolve the issue, it might be necessary to take your computer or laptop to a specialist. It will help the technician find the problem if you can explain how to recreate the error message.

Computers do not last forever, but proper maintenance will help make them last. Do not give up if your computer alarms you with a blue screen. A few tweaks are all the computer might need to run like new again!

>>>Download Mozy Online Backup<<<

My Take On Online Backup

It really is pretty simple when it all comes down to it. If you hold any files on your computer that you deem to be important to you, then you need to make sure those files are being backed up. Hard drive failure rates are higher than they should be and loads of websites are infected with viruses, spyware or malware just waiting to infect your computer at a moments notice. Backing your computer files up online is a great way to protect your computer data from any of these things that could happen.

In the end, spending a few bucks a month to backup say…1,000 family photos is not bad trade-off.

Video Recap:

• I give a quick presentation on why you should back your computer up.
• I show you what software I use for online backup.
• I show you how to download, install and configure Mozy.

Again, download Mozy and start backing up today.

My Take On Virtual Memory

The combination of RAM + virtual memory in your computer is a very critical combination for how good your computer will be able to multi-task. When your computer’s RAM fills up is when the virtual memory comes to the rescue and provides the needed memory resources that in turn help your computer to perform at a higher level. Not having your computer’s virtual memory configured properly could cause for some major slow downs, computer freezes or even potential blue screens.

Video Recap:

• I typically always let the ‘system’ manage the size set aside for virtual memory.
• The initial size of your virtual memory should be 1.5 times the amount of RAM in your computer (you may need to convert megabytes to gigabytes).
• The maximum size of your virtual memory should be 3 times the amount of RAM.
• Changing your virtual memory settings may require a reboot.

—>>>Click Here To Fix Your Computer Errors<<<—

Resources:

Download Malwarebytes Here: http://www.malwarebytes.org/

My Take:

As I said in the video, Malwarebytes is a piece of software that should be used by everyone who owns a computer. The number of websites out there that can infect your computer with adware, mal-ware or spyware are growing as each day goes by. Malwarebytes does a great job of detecting and removing these types of threats.

Video Recap:

• Download and install Malwarebytes
• Be sure to update it each time before running it
• Remove everything it finds
• It might require a reboot to completely remove everything
• Run it once every 1 to 2 weeks

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below.

If you went to a computer technician and said, “fix my computer,” they would first suggest a system restore, rather than wiping out your hard drive and starting over.

A system restore will take your computer back to a prior point in time before you had problems with your computer. This is preferable to wiping out your computer, spending hours re-installing the operating system and putting back all the software programs you had on it. In addition, you will also have to restore the personal information that you had previously backed up to an external hard drive.

How To Restore Computer

Why Computers Have Problems

A system restore can often quickly resolve problems with your computer. It is simple to learn how to restore computer functionality when small problems arise.

Sometimes, installing a new program can change how your computer works. Sometimes, it’s adding a new driver for a new device recently connected to your computer.

The first solution is to uninstall the program or driver, and this returns the computer to its previous level of functioning.

This, however, does not always work.

Consequently, the next best thing is to return your computer to an earlier point in time when everything did work correctly. This is the time before you installed the program or added the driver.

What Is System Protection?

System Protection is a feature that regularly creates restore times on your computer. These restore points save information about your computer at the time the process took place. For instance, a restore point saves system information, program information and registry settings.

While restore points are created automatically, you can also manually create restore points if you like.

Personal Files Unaffected By Restoring To An Earlier Time

Going back to an earlier time when the computer was working undoes system changes while leaving your personal data unaffected.

However, your photos, emails, files and documents will not go back to how they used to be before the restore point. For instance, a Word document that you created after the restore point date will have the same data and formatting. Even if the document was damaged, it will remain the same.

While a systems restore is somewhat like a backup, it is only backing up Windows system files, so you should always use a backup program to protect your personal files. You will not be able to fix or recover damaged or accidentally deleted personal files using the restore functionality.

How to Restore your Computer

When Windows 7 was first released, I had to learn the following steps on how to restore my PC.

1. I saved my open files and closed all programs because system restore will restart the computer.
2. I clicked the Start Button.
3. I typed “system restore” in the search box.
4. A list came up and I clicked “create a restore point.”
5. I then hit a blue button that said “system restore.”
6. I followed a wizard that showed me how to restore my computer.

Undoing System Restore Changes

When doing a system restore from Safe Mode, you cannot undo it.

However, you can undo a restore point if you don’t use Safe Mode. This is an option if the problem is not fixed.
The reason that you may want to undo a System Restore is because, apart from affecting registry settings, programs, and system files, the process also affects executable files, batch files, and scripts

Here are the steps to take to undo a System Restore:

1. Click “undo System Restore” (in the System Restore section.)
2. Click Next.
3. Review.
4. Click finish.

What Restore Point to Choose?

When you come to the System Restore section, you will see several dates to restore your computer back to a time when it worked well. This often confuses people because they don’t know how far back they should go. The best advice is simply to go back to the point before you installed a program or downloaded a driver that caused the problems. If you do go back before then, it will not harm your computer, but it is best to choose the point just before your computer problems began to show up.

Hard Disk Space Requirements

Finally, here are two things you should know about hard disk requirements for a System Restore:

1. System Restore will not work on hard drives less than 1 GB (gigabyte).
2. The minimum free space needed to create a restore point is 300 (megabyte) MB. System Restore can use up 15% of the space on a hard drive. As restore points accumulate older restore points are deleted to make room for new restore points.

It’s extremely frustrating when a computer freezes reading DVD media. When reading or copying from DVD freezes computer operations completely, there could be various causes and there are certain areas to pursue to fix the issue. They range from the physical layer, such as cabling and media, to the data and software layers, including drivers and codecs. Fortunately, when a DVD freezes computer operating systems, there are steps that can be taken to resolve the issue.

Computer Freezes Reading DVD

Have you checked the Cables?

The simplest thing to troubleshoot is actual physical connectivity. The problem with this area of troubleshooting is that it’s often overlooked as we jump right into possible software causes. Of course, how can I fix my computer if it isn’t plugged in? In order to keep things simple, always check actual physical connectivity first. To do this, first unplug the computer. Then open the case and find the DVD ROM drive. Verify that any cables running into it are snugly secured. Depending on the age and model of the computer, there could be separate connection and power cables or they may be combined. Rather than just pushing on them, unplug them and then plug them back in tightly.

Have you Tried Other Disks?

Another physical troubleshooting area to consider when a computer freezes reading DVD media is the disk itself. Does it happen with all disks or just a few? Even high-end software and commercial movies can be released on defective disks occasionally. This is especially true, for example, of DVDs from Netflix, which are passed around and can easily become scratched and difficult of DVD ROM drives to read. It’s also true of DVD-R and DVD-RW writable disks, which vary widely in quality. Try various disks to determine whether bad media is the cause.

Have you Tried Another Drive?

Trying another DVD ROM drive when actions like reading or copying from DVD freezes computer operations is another quick and easy first troubleshooting step to try. If the disk that you believe is causing the problem works with no trouble in another drive, it at least isolates the problem to the individual computer and not media.

Have you Updated the Drivers?

A driver is a small program that allows the hardware and the operating system to communicate. The problem with drivers is that, because they are small and frequently-accessed programs, they can easily become corrupted. They could also be outdated. In either case, replacing the existing driver with the latest version is the best approach. Find out the DVD drive model number, then go to the drive manufacturer’s web site and download the latest drivers. Installation instructions vary depending on whether the driver file is a self-installing executable or a DLL file, but the manufacturer should supply these instructions.

Is the Drive New?

If the drive was recently installed and any activity with the DVD freezes computer applications every time out, take the drive back to the retailer and exchange it for another one just in case. If the crashes continue, it might be a resource conflict or incorrect drivers. Again, it’s important to get the very latest drivers from the manufacturer, even if the drive comes with a driver disk already. Considering resource conflicts, they are a lot rarer today but they do happen. With that in mind, try moving the drive connection cable to another open slot on the motherboard to correct resource conflicts.

Did it Crash While watching Movies?

If your computer freezes reading DVD based movies and no other DVDs, there are certainly issues specifically related to this type of operation. It could possibly be a video card problem. To troubleshoot this, try making sure the video card is securely attached to the motherboard, update the video card drivers and, if possible, try a replacement card. Another issue with watching movies and even downloaded videos is codecs. “Codec” stands for “code/decode” and is a program that tells your computer how to read and display video data. Each type of video has its own specific codec and codec needs change rapidly. Try installing all-in-one codec packages such as FFDshow, K-lite or CCCP to resolve the issue. Also remember to update codecs frequently.

Computer Freezes Reading DVD – Is the Software Compatible?

The most obvious things are the ones that aren’t always considered. If the computer freezes during the software install process, it’s possible the software is incompatible with the computer itself. In order to verify compatibility, you should check the software packaging to verify that your computer meets the operating system, memory, disk space, processor architecture and other requirements.

There it goes again—your computer is frozen like a log in January—ever wonder how to unfreeze a computer? Computers can freeze for a variety of reasons. The program you are using may not be responding or may be lagging (waiting for another process to finish before it can respond). There may be a hardware problem with your machine. There may be a virus or spyware issue attacking the programs you are running. There may be a problem with your drivers (the programs that run your computer’s basic hardware like the monitor, disk drives, etc.).

How To Unfreeze A Computer

Computer freezes are scary, but fixing them is usually simple. One way is to simply wait your computer out. It is often an agonizing, terrifying experience, wondering how much work you are going to lose if the computer crashes, but computers are remarkably capable of fixing themselves as long as you are patient. Device drivers can usually recover (and you will get a popup explaining what happened). Programs that are waiting for other programs will usually respond if you wait long enough. I often fix my computer simply by waiting.

So now you’ve waited more than five minutes and your mouse pointer still won’t move. A second common method is what I call the open task manager and computer unfreezes method. Just opening task manager may not unfreeze your computer right away, but most programs can be ‘force closed’ using task manager. If the computer freezes because of an unresponsive program, that program can be closed using task manager. I most commonly fix my computer using the task manager. Use the open task manager and computer unfreezes method by holding down ctrl+alt+delete.

If your computer is freezing often and running slow, you may have a lot of background programs (commonly called ‘processes’) running. Open task manager and use the ‘processes’ tab at the top to shut down some of these processes. Be careful though, many processes are vital to keeping your computer running, so it is best to know what a process is doing before turning it off. Usually processes labeled “system” are vital to your computer and should never be stopped. This frees up processing resources on your computer and will make it less likely to freeze or run slowly. Note, processes automatically restart every time your computer boots, so you need to go back in and stop the processes each time your computer restarts. If you find yourself constantly stopping certain processes, consider uninstalling the programs creating the processes to remove them for good.

If your computer consistently freezes when running certain programs you may need to do some investigating. Make sure the program you are trying to use is fully updated and compatible with the computer and operating system you are using. This may require you to visit the program manufacturer’s website for updates, compatibility notes, or bug reports. These are usually easily found with a Google search. Many programs will have “patches” or updates that fix common issues such as crashing and freezing. If you can find nothing wrong then you may want to reinstall the program. Sometimes installation errors cause programs to freeze or crash consistently.

If your computer is really going haywire, you may get the dreaded “blue screen”. This isn’t always as bad as people make it up to be. A blue screen usually means your computer is doing a dump of its physical memory. Think of it as a really nasty bathroom break for your computer. It is cleaning out all of the electronic garbage that is causing errors. This is in fact good, because it means your computer is successfully fixing itself. Computers will often reboot just fine after a blue screen dump. However, if this is something that happens often or consistently with certain programs, there may be a deeper issue. You may need to permanently uninstall the program causing the blue screen freeze as they can be very harmful to your computer’s memory and processor if frequent. In these instances you can also do a “system restore”–usually accessible through the control panel options. This will restore your computer’s system settings to a previous or default state, and can fix many recurring error issues. System restores do not usually damage or delete your computer’s programs or files, but can affect files or programs causing errors.

Let’s say your computer might have a nasty case of the digital flu. Computer viruses and spyware/malware attacks are very common, especially to computers usually connected to the internet through public Wi-Fi networks (like Starbucks). Be sure to consistently run your computer’s spyware, virus protection program and scan for threats. If your programs are updated (and nearly all subscription based virus programs automatically update) your computer can usually scan and take care of threats all on its own. Making sure your computer is healthy is one way to prevent it from freezing or running slowly in the first place. This is like preventative health for your computer!

Sometimes there just is no other choice. You have waited your computer out, task manager isn’t responding, and your computer is seriously stuck. You have to manually shut off your computer by holding down the power button for several seconds. This is not the same as “shutting the computer down”. A computer shutdown is a controlled process that gradually deactivates programs and empties memory files. A force shut off is much like a power-outage. Your computer simply stops running. This is very detrimental to your memory and processor. It can also permanently damage programs (especially those you had running when you did the shut off). Your computer’s memory space and processing speed will degrade every time you shut off, even if you don’t notice changes on your drives. Eventually, your computer will simply not be able to boot-up again.

Next time you face the dreaded lock-up, remember these tips and warnings on how to unfreeze a computer.

If you have a computer freezing on Facebook games, tka. It could either be a simple, easily fixed problem or a serious issue that desperately needs your attention, but the fact remains: your computer should not be freezing on Facebook games.

Computer Freezing On Facebook Games

Computer freezes on anything is a sign of trouble. We will discuss a few possible reasons, starting with simple ones that can be easily fixed yourself. After the simple ones are tackled, more serious possibilities will be mentioned, with the recommendation that you talk to a tech oriented friend or call tech support to solve these if you feel uncomfortable or unqualified diving into such things yourself. They are also mentioned in order of likelihood.

The first thing you should do is update your Flash. You can go to Adobe.com and search “Flash Update,” then select the Flash Player to get to the update page. You can also search Google for updates from other sites as well. Usually, this will solve your problem.

If that did not fix your computer freezing problem, another possibility that could cause your computer to freeze on Facebook games is there is something wrong with your browser. This could be something as simple as your browser being outdated, or somewhere along the line some files got corrupted somehow. Try updating your browser to the latest version before anything.

If it is already at the latest version, it is possible that an add on could be getting in the way. To check to see if this is the case you should run Firefox in safe mode by selecting the Help menu at the top and clicking the option “Restart Firefox with Add-ons Disabled.” If you can play games just fine in safe mode, you should try disabling or uninstalling the add-ons one by one to see which one is causing your problem.

In the event that your browser files got corrupted somewhere down the line, your only options are to try a different browser of uninstall and reinstall the one you are using. The latter option is not an easy option for built in browsers, such as Internet Explorer on Windows, but it is possible if you dig around operating system files and know what to delete. We advise you let a tech do this if you have ruled out everything else mentioned in this article, since doing this wrong can completely mess up your computer.

Malware, such as viruses and spyware, can cause your computer to struggle doing its job. If you have noticed it running really slow lately this is probably the cause. Download and install an anti-virus software, let it update its files, and then set it to scan. Scans can take several hours to run so you should do this when you know you will not need your computer for a while. There are some viruses that are really troublesome to get rid of, and if you notice your anti-virus picking up the same ones over and over again you should talk to a computer tech about it. If you have been without anti-virus software for a while, you should also download a registry scanner to make sure you do not have an infection in the Windows Registry.

Having too many programs running can make your computer run slow, too. If you have a lot of programs launching at start up, see if you can tell them not to. While it is convenient to have certain programs start up with your computer, such as instant messaging programs, they eat up computer resources even if they are just sitting there in your tray. Usually, this option is located somewhere in the Settings menus.

The next two options are much more involved issues that the average computer user should not attempt to resolve them by themselves.

Computer Freezing On Facebook Games Could Be The Video Drivers

The first of these is that there is a need to update your computer’s video drivers. Video drivers that are out of date, generic, or not a perfect match to a computer’s graphics card or operating system can run into intermittent issues, such as being able to watch movies but not run flash games or video chat with other people over the Internet. It can be really random where the problem strikes and your computer freezes, depending on the situation. There is a very good piece of software that will manage your system’s drivers called Driver Scanner. If you want to purchase such software, then that is the only one I would recommend. Otherwise, have someone determine what kind of hardware you have and update your video drivers accordingly.

There are many people out there that try to run the latest version of Windows on computers that are almost ten years old. If this describes you, then your problem is likely here. There are ways to fix this without buying a new computer, such as upgrading some of the hardware inside your computer or rolling back your installation. It is remarkable how well older hardware can handle newer software, but sometimes it is all these old machines can do just to run the newest version of an operating system, making doing anything interesting on top of that difficult, if not impossible.

We hope this has solved your computer freezing on Facebook games issue, and that you have a happy future playing Facebook games to your heart’s content.